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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 29 December 2014
This article is a review of PREGGOLAND.Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2014. (For more information, click here.)
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“Underachieving is sort of my thing,” Ruth (Sonja Bennett) to Danny (Paul Campbell)
Are your friends becoming dweeby, swapping carefree nights out for babies? Do you watch on in frustrated horror? Then PREGGOLAND is most definitely for you. Add in sibling rivalry and clique ostracising, and we get an ambitious social entertainment. An unwillingness to grow up dominates mainstream male-centric comedies, from THE HANGOVER to THIS IS THE END. Arrested development female oriented movies are too few. As TINY FURNITURE launched writer-director-actress Lena Dunham, PREGGOLAND will hopefully do the same for lead and writer Sonja Bennett.
Awkward hilarity stall set out immediately, at a baby shower for pal Shannon (Laura Harris), Ruth is swigging from a flask shaped like a 1990s mobile phone. The only one drunk, Ruth gives the host a gift of a dildo, which the children grab. Trying to hit a piñata, Ruth whacks a boy in the face with a baseball bat. Wringing the scene for guffaw grabbing value is a shrewd opener.
At 35-years old, Ruth Huxley has been working at the same supermarket for two decades. You know it’s going to be an unusual place when the janitor is played by Danny Trejo, on mischievous form. His Pedro is a doctor “in my country”. Older than the majority of her colleagues, and retaining a youngsters aversion to the future, she has only progressed to cashier. Aimless, she lives with father, Walter (James Caan), who is so desperate for a grandchild he has already handcrafted a wooden crib in preparation. Younger sister Hillary (Lisa Durupt) has been trying to conceive to no avail, and takes out her own frustration on older sibling, not hesitating to utter the cruellest verbal putdowns – at one point asking if Ruth suffers from Down’s syndrome.
Are your friends becoming dweeby, swapping carefree nights out for babies? Do you watch on in frustrated horror? Then PREGGOLAND is most definitely for you. Add in sibling rivalry and clique ostracising, and we get an ambitious social entertainment. An unwillingness to grow up dominates mainstream male-centric comedies, from THE HANGOVER to THIS IS THE END. Arrested development female oriented movies are too few. As TINY FURNITURE launched writer-director-actress Lena Dunham, PREGGOLAND will hopefully do the same for lead and writer Sonja Bennett.
Awkward hilarity stall set out immediately, at a baby shower for pal Shannon (Laura Harris), Ruth is swigging from a flask shaped like a 1990s mobile phone. The only one drunk, Ruth gives the host a gift of a dildo, which the children grab. Trying to hit a piñata, Ruth whacks a boy in the face with a baseball bat. Wringing the scene for guffaw grabbing value is a shrewd opener.
At 35-years old, Ruth Huxley has been working at the same supermarket for two decades. You know it’s going to be an unusual place when the janitor is played by Danny Trejo, on mischievous form. His Pedro is a doctor “in my country”. Older than the majority of her colleagues, and retaining a youngsters aversion to the future, she has only progressed to cashier. Aimless, she lives with father, Walter (James Caan), who is so desperate for a grandchild he has already handcrafted a wooden crib in preparation. Younger sister Hillary (Lisa Durupt) has been trying to conceive to no avail, and takes out her own frustration on older sibling, not hesitating to utter the cruellest verbal putdowns – at one point asking if Ruth suffers from Down’s syndrome.
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“Ruth, you don’t fit in anymore.” Baby shower fallout involves her excising from the gang. Humiliating and actually heartbreaking, Ruth’s three best buds, Shannon, Deb (Carrie Ruscheinsky) and Cherry (Denise Jones), tell her to find mates of a similar mindset. One can understand Ruth’s exasperation. PREGGOLAND hints at how society seems to demand parenthood, and that too many do it because it is expected rather than desired. And once mired in parenthood, the new responsibility and curtailment of freedom creates resentment and jealousy. Mutual irritation between the en-babied (new word alert!) and the childless is surprisingly not tackled more. (Let’s forgot about THE CHANGE UP.)
Shakespearian comedy of errors territory is entered when Ruth buys an $800 stroller (a sly indictment of a consumerist ideology requiring offspring), and is mistaken for being with child. The fallacy catches fire. Earlier slights and indifference are now contrasted:
- Getting kicked off the bus for being five cents short previously, now with pushchair in hand has Ruth ride for free.
- Fired for hosting an after hours party in the supermarket is immediately rescinded when boss Danny discovers the pregnancy.
- Ex-friendship circle about-face and receive her back into the fold.
- Walter, barely keeping his disappointment from the surface, now looks on in pride at his eldest.
- Cantankerous sister is put in her place.
Waiting for it all to backfire has an almost BREAKING BAD tension in places.
Modern first world hypocrisy is given curt treatment. Watching through your fingers is default mode as Ruth spends the runtime sucked further into the lie. Throw in a romance subplot and the 109 minutes is not wasted.
Intermixed into the satire are gross-out jests:
“I don’t want your pen*s to bash the baby’s head in,” Ruth on potential coitus
“Trust me, it’s not that big,” Danny
Comparisons to LAGGIES and BRIDESMAIDS (even down to a love for singer CeCe Peniston as opposed to Wilson Phillips) should be welcomed by all three films, which deliver refreshing laughs.
We have selected movies below that we think will be of interest to you based on this review.
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